CHAPTER II

GOLDEN GUINEAS

ANTHEA woke in the morning from a very real sort of dream, in which she
was walking in the Zoological Gardens on a pouring wet day without any umbrella.
The animals seemed desperately unhappy because of the rain, and were all
growling gloomily. When she awoke, both the growling and the rain went on just
the same. The growling was the heavy regular breathing of her sister Jane, who
had a slight cold and was still asleep. The rain fell in slow drops on to
Anthea’s face from the wet corner of a bath‐towel which her brother Robert was
gently squeezing the water out of, to wake her up, as he now explained.

“Oh, drop it!” she said rather crossly; so he did, for he was not a brutal
brother, though very ingenious in apple‐pie beds, booby‐traps,
page: 36 original methods of awakening sleeping relatives, and
the other little accomplishments which made home happy.

“I had such a funny dream,” Anthea began.

“So did I,” said Jane, wakening suddenly and without warning. “I dreamed we found
a Sand‐fairy in the gravel‐pits, and it said it was a Sammyadd, and we might
have a new wish every day, and”—

“But that’s what I dreamed,” said Robert; “I was just going to tell
you—and we had the first wish directly it said so. And I dreamed you girls were
donkeys enough to ask for us all to be beautiful as the day, and we jolly well
were, and it was perfectly beastly.”

“But can different people all dream the same thing?” said Anthea,
sitting up in bed, “because I dreamed all that as well as about the Zoo and the
rain; and Baby didn’t know us in my dream, and the servants shut us out of the
house because the radiantness of our beauty was such a complete disguise,
and”—

The voice of the eldest brother sounded from across the landing.

page: 37

“Come on Robert,” it said, “you’ll be late for breakfast again—unless you mean to
shirk your bath like you did on Tuesday.”

“I say, come here a sec,” Robert replied. “I didn’t shirk it; I had it after
brekker in father’s dressing‐room, because ours was emptied away.”

Cyril appeared in the doorway, partially clothed.

“Look here,” said Anthea, “we’ve all had such an odd dream. We’ve all dreamed we
found a Sand‐fairy.”

Her voice died away before Cyril’s contemptuous glance. “Dream?” he said; “you
little sillies, it’s true. I tell you it all happened. That’s why
I’m so keen on being down early. We’ll go up there directly after brekker, and
have another wish. Only we’ll make up our minds, solid, before we go, what it is
we do want, and no one must ask for anything unless the others agree first. No
more peerless beauties for this child, thank you. Not if I know it!”

The other three dressed, with their mouths open. If all that dream about the
Sand‐fairy
page: 38 was real, this real dressing
seemed very like a dream, the girls thought. Jane felt that Cyril was right, but
Anthea was not sure, till after they had seen Martha and heard her full and
plain reminders about their naughty conduct the day before. Then Anthea was
sure. “Because,” said she, “servants never dream anything but the things in the
Dream‐book, like snakes and oysters and going to a wedding— that means a
funeral, and snakes are a false female friend, and oysters are babies.”

“Talking of babies,” said Cyril, “where’s the Lamb?”

“Martha’s going to take him to Rochester to see her cousins. Mother said she
might. She’s dressing him now,” said Jane, “in his very best coat and hat.
Bread‐and‐butter, please.”

“She seems to like taking him too,” said Robert in a tone of wonder.

“Servants do like taking babies to see their relations,” Cyril said;
“I’ve noticed it before—especially in their best things.”

“I expect they pretend they’re their own babies, and that they’re not servants at
all, but
page: 39 married to noble dukes of high degree,
and they say the babies are the little dukes and duchesses,” Jane suggested
dreamily, taking more marmalade. “I expect that’s what Martha’ll say to her
cousin. She’ll enjoy herself most frightfully.”

“Fancy walking to Rochester with the Lamb on your back! Oh, crikey!” said Cyril
in full agreement.

“She’s going by carrier,” said Jane. “Let’s see them off, then we shall have done
a polite and kindly act, and we shall be quite sure we’ve got rid of them for
the day.”

So they did.

Martha wore her Sunday dress of two shades of purple, so tight in the chest that
it made her stoop, and her blue hat with the pink cornflowers and white ribbon.
She had a yellow‐lace collar with a green bow. And the Lamb had indeed his very
best cream‐coloured silk coat and hat. It was a smart party that the
page: 40 carrier’s cart picked up at the Cross Roads. When its
white tilt and red wheels had slowly vanished in a swirl of chalkdust—

“And now for the Sammyadd!” said Cyril, and off they went.

As they went they decided on the wish they would ask for. Although they were all
in a great hurry they did not try to climb down the sides of the gravel‐pit, but
went round by the safe lower road, as if they had been carts. They had made a
ring of stones round the place where the Sand‐fairy had disappeared, so they
easily found the spot. The sun was burning and bright, and the sky was deep
blue—without a cloud. The sand was very hot to touch.

“Oh—suppose it was only a dream, after all,” Robert said as the boys uncovered
their spades from the sand‐heap where they had buried them and began to dig.

“Suppose you were a sensible chap,” said Cyril; “one’s quite as likely as the
other!”

“Suppose you kept a civil tongue in your head,” Robert snapped.

“Suppose we girls take a turn,” said Jane,
page: 41
laughing. “You boys seem to be getting very warm.”

“Suppose you don’t come shoving your silly oar in,” said Robert, who was now warm
indeed.

“We won’t,” said Anthea quickly. “Robert dear, don’t be so grumpy—we won’t say a
word, you shall be the one to speak to the Fairy and tell him what we’ve decided
to wish for. You’ll say it much better than we shall.”

“Suppose you drop being a little humbug,” said Robert, but not crossly. “Look
out—dig with your hands, now!”

So they did, and presently uncovered the spider‐shaped brown hairy body, long
arms and legs, bat’s ear and snail’s eyes of the Sand‐fairy himself. Everyone
drew a deep breath of satisfaction, for now of course it couldn’t have been a
dream.

The Psammead sat up and shook the sand out of its fur.

“How’s your left whisker this morning?” said Anthea politely.

“Nothing to boast of,” said it; “it had rather a restless night. But thank you
for asking.”

page: 42

“I say,” said Robert, “do you feel up to giving wishes to‐day, because we very
much want an extra besides the regular one? The extra’s a very little one,” he
added reassuringly.

“Humph!” said the Sand‐fairy. (If you read this story aloud, please pronounce
“humph” exactly as it is spelt, for that is how he said it.) “Humph! Do you
know, until I heard you being disagreeable to each other just over my head, and
so loud too, I really quite thought I had dreamed you all. I do have very odd
dreams sometimes.”

“Do you?” Jane hurried to say, so as to get away from the subject of
disagreeableness. “I wish,” she added politely, “you’d tell us about your
dreams—they must be awfully interesting.”

“Is that the day’s wish?” said the Sand‐fairy, yawning.

Cyril muttered something about “just like a girl,” and the rest stood silent. If
they said “Yes,” then good‐bye to the other wishes they had decided to ask for.
If they said “No,” it would be very rude, and they had all been
page: 43 taught manners, and had learned a little too, which
is not at all the same thing. A sigh of relief broke from all lips when the
Sand‐fairy said:

“If I do I shan’t have strength to give you a second wish; not even good tempers,
or common sense, or manners, or little things like that.”

“We don’t want you to put yourself out at all about these things, we
can manage them quite well ourselves,” said Cyril eagerly; while the others
looked guiltily at each other, and wished the Fairy would not keep all on about
good tempers, but give them one good rowing if it wanted to, and then have done
with it.

“Well,” said the Psammead, putting out his long snail’s eyes so suddenly that one
of them nearly went into the round boy’s eye of Robert, “let’s have the little
wish first.”

“We don’t want the servants to notice the gifts you give us.”

“Are kind enough to give us,” said Anthea in a whisper.

“Are kind enough to give us, I mean,” said Robert.

page: 44

The Fairy swelled himself out a bit, let his breath go, and said—

“I’ve done that for you—it was quite easy. People don’t notice
things much, anyway. What’s the next wish?”

“We want,” said Robert slowly, “to be rich beyond the dreams of something or
other.”

“Avarice,” said Jane.

“So it is,” said the Fairy unexpectedly. “But it won’t do you much good, that’s
one comfort,” it muttered to itself. “Come —I can’t go beyond dreams, you know!
How much do you want, and will you have it in gold or notes?”

“Gold, please—and millions of it.”—

“This gravel‐pit full be enough?” said the Fairy in an offhand manner.

“Oh yes!”—

“Then get out before I begin, or you’ll be buried alive in it.”

It made its skinny arms so long, and waved them so frighteningly, that the
children ran as hard as they could towards the road by which carts used to come
to the gravel‐pits. Only Anthea had presence of mind enough to
page: 45 shout a timid “Good‐morning, I hope your
whisker will be better to‐morrow,” as she ran.

On the road they turned and looked back, and they had to shut their eyes, and
open them very slowly, a little bit at a time, because the sight was too
dazzling for their eyes to be able to bear it. It was something like trying to
look at the sun at high noon on Midsummer Day. For the whole of the sand‐pit was
full, right up to the very top, with new shining gold pieces, and all the little
sand‐martins’ little front doors were covered out of sight. Where the road for
the carts wound into the gravel‐pit the gold lay in heaps like stones lie by the
roadside, and a great bank of shining gold shelved down from where it lay flat
and smooth between the tall sides of the gravel‐pit. And all the gleaming heap
was minted gold. And on the sides and edges of these countless coins the midday
sun shone and sparkled, and glowed and gleamed till the quarry looked like the
mouth of a smelting furnace, or one of the fairy halls that you see sometimes in
the sky at sunset.

page: 46

The children stood with their mouths open, and no one said a word.

At last Robert stooped and picked up one of the loose coins from the edge of the
heap by the cart‐road, and looked at it. He looked on both sides. Then he said
in a low voice, quite different to his own, “It’s not sovereigns.”

“It’s gold, anyway,” said Cyril. And now they all began to talk at once. They all
picked up the golden treasure by handfuls and let it run through their fingers
like water, and the chink it made as it fell was wonderful music. At first they
quite forgot to think of spending the money, it was so nice to play with. Jane
sat down between two heaps of gold, and Robert began to bury her, as you bury
your father in sand when you are at the seaside and he has gone to sleep on the
beach with his newspaper over his face. But Jane was not half buried before she
cried out, “Oh, stop, it’s too heavy! It hurts!”

Robert said “Bosh!” and went on.

“Let me out, I tell you,” cried Jane, and was taken out, very white, and
trembling a little.

page: 47

“You’ve no idea what it’s like,” she said; “it’s like stones on you—or like
chains.”

“Look here,” Cyril said, “if this is to do us any good, it’s no good our staying
gasping at it like this. Let’s fill our pockets and go and buy things. Don’t you
forget, it won’t last after sunset. I wish we’d asked the Sammyadd why things
don’t turn to stone. Perhaps this will. I’ll tell you what, there’s a pony and
cart in the village.”

“Do you want to buy that?” asked Jane.

“No, silly,—we’ll hire it. And then we’ll go to Rochester and buy
heaps and heaps of things. Look here, let’s each take as much as we can carry.
But it’s not sovereigns. They’ve got a man’s head on one side and a thing like
the ace of spades on the other. Fill your pockets with it, I tell you, and come
along. You can jaw as we go—if you must jaw.”

Cyril sat down and began to fill his pockets.

“You made fun of me for getting father to have nine pockets in my Norfolks,” said
he, “but now you see!”

They did. For when Cyril had filled his
page: 48 nine
pockets and his handkerchief and the space between himself and his shirt front
with the gold coins, he had to stand up. But he staggered, and had to sit down
again in a hurry.

“Throw out some of the cargo,” said Robert. “You’ll sink the ship, old chap. That
comes of nine pockets.”

And Cyril had to.

Then they set off to walk to the village. It was more than a mile, and the road
was very dusty indeed, and the sun seemed to get hotter and hotter, and the gold
in their pockets got heavier and heavier.

It was Jane who said, “I don’t see how we’re to spend it all. There must be
thousands of pounds among the lot of us. I’m going to leave some of mine behind
this stump in the hedge. And directly we get to the village we’ll buy some
biscuits; I know it’s long past dinner‐time.” She took out a handful or two of
gold and hid it in the hollows of an old hornbeam. “How round and yellow they
are,” she said. “Don’t you wish they were gingerbread nuts and we were going to
eat them?”

page: 49

“Well, they’re not, and we’re not,” said Cyril. “Come on!”

But they came on heavily and wearily. Before they reached the village, more than
one stump in the hedge concealed its little hoard of hidden treasure. Yet they
reached the village with about twelve hundred guineas in their pockets. But in
spite of this inside wealth they looked quite ordinary outside, and no one would
have thought they could have more than a half‐crown each at the outside. The
haze of heat, the blue of the wood smoke, made a sort of dim misty cloud over
the red roofs of the village. The four sat down heavily on the first bench they
came to. It happened to be outside the Blue Boar Inn.

It was decided that Cyril should go into the Blue Boar and ask for ginger‐beer,
because, as Anthea said, “It is not wrong for men to go into public houses, only
for children. And Cyril is nearer to being a man than us, because he is the
eldest.” So he went. The others sat in the sun and waited.

“Oh, hats, how hot it is!” said Robert. “Dogs put their tongues out when they’re
hot; I
page: 50 wonder if it would cool us at all to put
out ours?”

“We might try,” Jane said; and they all put their tongues out as far as ever they
could go, so that it quite stretched their throats, but it only seemed to make
them thirstier than ever, besides annoying everyone who went by. So they took
their tongues in again, just as Cyril came back with the ginger‐beer.

“I had to pay for it out of my own two‐and‐sevenpence, though, that I was going
to buy rabbits with,” he said. “They wouldn’t change the gold. And when I pulled
out a handful the man just laughed and said it was card‐counters. And I got some
sponge‐cakes too, out of a glass jar on the bar‐counter. And some biscuits with
caraways in.”

The sponge‐cakes were both soft and dry and the biscuits were dry too, and yet
soft, which biscuits ought not to be. But the ginger‐beer made up for
everything.

“It’s my turn now to try to buy something with the money,” Anthea said; “I’m next
eldest. Where is the pony‐cart kept?”

It was at The Chequers, and Anthea went
page: 51 in the back way to the yard, because they all
knew that little girls ought not to go into the bars of public‐houses. She came
out, as she herself said, “pleased but not proud”.

“He’ll be ready in a brace of shakes, he says,” she remarked. “and he’s to have
one sovereign—or whatever it is—to drive us in to Rochester and back, besides
waiting there till we’ve got everything we want. I think I managed very
well.”

“You think yourself jolly clever, I daresay,” said Cyril moodily. “How did you do
it?”

“I wasn’t jolly clever enough to go taking handfuls of money out of my pocket, to
make it seem cheap, anyway,” she retorted. “I just found a young man doing
something to a horse’s leg with a sponge and a pail. And I held out one
sovereign, and I said, ‘Do you know what this is?’ He said, ‘No,’ and he’d call
his father. And the old man came, and he said it was a spade guinea; and he said
was it my own to do as I liked with, and I said ‘Yes’; and I asked about the
pony‐cart, and I said he could have the guinea if he’d
page: 52 drive us in to Rochester. And his name is S. Crispin.
And he said, ‘Right oh.’”

It was a new sensation to be driven in a smart pony‐trap along pretty country
roads; it was very pleasant too (which is not always the case with new
sensations), quite apart from the beautiful plans of spending the money which
each child made as they went along, silently of course and quite to itself, for
they felt it would never have done to let the old innkeeper hear them talk in
the affluent sort of way they were thinking in. The old man put them down by the
bridge at their request.

“If you were going to buy a carriage and horses, where would you go?” asked
Cyril, as if he were only asking for the sake of something to say.

“Billy Peasemarsh, at the Saracen’s Head,” said the old man promptly. “Though all
forbid I should recommend any man where it’s a question of horses, no more than
I’d take anybody else’s recommending if I was a‐buying one. But if your pa’s
thinking of a turnout of any sort, there ain’t a straighter
page: 53 man in Rochester, nor a civiller spoken, than Billy,
though I says it.”

“Thank you,” said Cyril. “The Saracen’s Head.”

And now the children began to see one of the laws of nature turn upside down and
stand on its head like an acrobat. Any grown‐up person would tell you that money
is hard to get and easy to spend. But the fairy money had been easy to get, and
spending it was not only hard, it was almost impossible. The tradespeople of
Rochester seemed to shrink, to a trades‐person, from the glittering fairy gold
(“furrin money” they called it, for the most part). To begin with, Anthea, who
had had the misfortune to sit on her hat earlier in the day, wished to buy
another. She chose a very beautiful one, trimmed with pink roses and the blue
breasts of peacocks. It was marked in the window, “Paris Model, three
guineas.”

“I’m glad,” she said, “because, if it says guineas, it means guineas, and not
sovereigns, which we haven’t got.”

But when she took three of the spade
page: 54 guineas in
her hand, which was by this time rather dirty owing to her not having put on
gloves before going to the gravel‐pit, the black‐silk young lady in the shop
looked very hard at her, and went and whispered something to an older and uglier
lady, also in black silk, and then they gave her back the money and said it was
not current coin.

“It’s good money,” said Anthea, “and it’s my own.”

“I daresay,” said the lady, “but it’s not the kind of money that’s fashionable
now, and we don’t care about taking it.”

“I believe they think we’ve stolen it,” said Anthea, rejoining the others in the
street; “if we had gloves they wouldn’t think we were so dishonest. It’s my
hands being so dirty fills their minds with doubts.”

So they chose a humble shop, and the girls bought cotton gloves, the kind at
sixpence three‐farthings, but when they offered a guinea the woman looked at it
through her spectacles and said she had no change; so the gloves had to be paid
for out of Cyril’s two‐and‐sevenpence that he meant to buy rabbits with,
page: 55 and so had the green imitation crocodile‐skin
purse at ninepence‐halfpenny which had been bought at the same time. They tried
several more shops, the kinds where you buy toys and scent, and silk
handkerchiefs and books, and fancy boxes of stationery, and photographs of
objects of interest in the vicinity. But nobody cared to change a guinea that
day in Rochester, and as they went from shop to shop they got dirtier and
dirtier, and their hair got more and more untidy, and Jane slipped and fell down
on a part of the road where a water‐cart had just gone by. Also they got very
hungry, but they found no one would give them anything to eat for their guineas.
After trying two pastry‐cooks in vain, they became so hungry, perhaps from the
smell of the cake in the shops, as Cyril suggested, that they formed a plan of
campaign in whispers and carried it out in desperation. They marched into a
third pastry‐cook’s—Beale his name was,—and before the people behind the counter
could interfere each child had seized three new penny buns, clapped the three
together between its dirty hands, and taken a big bite
page: 56 out of the triple sandwich. Then they stood at bay,
with the twelve buns in their hands and their mouths very full indeed. The
shocked pastry‐cook bounded round the corner.

“Here,” said Cyril, speaking as distinctly as he could, and holding out the
guinea he got ready before entering the shop, “pay yourself out of that.”

Mr. Beale snatched the coin, bit it, and put it into his pocket.

“Off you go,” he said, brief and stern like the man in the song.

“But the change?” said Anthea, who had a saving mind.

“Change!” said the man. “I’ll change you! Hout you goes; and you may think
yourselves lucky I don’t send for the police to find out where you got it!”

In the Castle Gardens the millionaires finished the buns, and though the curranty
softness of these were delicious, and acted like a charm in raising the spirits
of the party, yet even the stoutest heart quailed at the thought of venturing to
sound Mr. Billy Peasemarsh at the Saracen’s Head on the subject of a horse
and
page: 57 carriage. The boys would have given up the
idea, but Jane was always a hopeful child, and Anthea generally an obstinate
one, and their earnestness prevailed.

The whole party, by this time indescribably dirty, therefore betook itself to the
Saracen’s Head. The yard‐method of attack having been successful at The Chequers
was tried again here. Mr. Peasemarsh was in the yard, and Robert opened the
business in these terms—

“They tell me you have a lot of horses and carriages to sell.” It had been agreed
that Robert should be spokesman, because in books it is always the gentlemen who
buy horses, and not ladies, and Cyril had had his go at the Blue Boar.

“They tell you true, young man,” said Mr. Peasemarsh. He was a long lean man,
with very blue eyes and a tight mouth and narrow lips.

“We should like to buy some, please,” said Robert politely.

“I daresay you would.”

“Will you show us a few, please? To choose from.”

page: 58

“Who are you a‐kidden of?” inquired Mr. Billy Peasemarsh. “Was you sent here of a
message?”

“I tell you,” said Robert, “we want to buy some horses and carriages, and a man
told us you were straight and civil spoken, but I shouldn’t wonder if he was
mistaken.”—

“Upon my sacred!” said Mr. Peasemarsh. “Shall I trot the whole stable out for
your Honour’s worship to see? Or shall I send round to the Bishop’s to see of
he’s a nag or two to dispose of?”

“Please do,” said Robert, “if it’s not too much trouble. It would be very kind of
you.”

Mr. Peasemarsh put his hands in his pockets and laughed, and they did not like
the way he did it. Then he shouted “Willum!”

A stooping ostler appeared in a stable door.

“Here, Willum, come and look at this ’ere young dook! Wants to buy the whole
stud, lock, stock, and bar’l. And ain’t got tuppence in his pocket to bless
hisself with, I’ll go bail!”

Willum’s eyes followed his master’s pointing thumb with contemptuous
interest.

page: 59

“Do ’e, for sure?” he said.

But Robert spoke, though both the girls were now pulling at his jacket and
begging him to “come along”. He spoke, and he was very angry; he said—

“I’m not a young duke, and I never pretended to be. And as for tuppence—what do
you call this?” And before the others could stop him he had pulled out two fat
handfuls of shining guineas, and held them out for Mr. Peasemarsh to look at. He
did look. He snatched one up in his finger and thumb. He bit it, and Jane
expected him to say, “The best horse in my stables is at your service.” But the
others knew better. Still it was a blow, even to the most desponding, when he
said shortly—

“Willum, shut the yard doors,” and Willum grinned and went to shut them.

“Good‐afternoon,” said Robert hastily; “we shan’t buy any of your horses now,
whatever you say, and I hope it’ll be a lesson to you.” He had seen a little
side gate open, and was moving towards it as he spoke. But Billy Peasemarsh put
himself in the way.

page: 60

“Not so fast, you young off‐scouring!” he said. “Willum, fetch the pleece.”

Willum went. The children stood huddled together like frightened sheep, and Mr.
Peasemarsh spoke to them till the pleece arrived. He said many things. Among
other things he said—

“I tell you we did,” Jane said. “There’s a fairy there—all over brown fur—with
ears like a bat’s and eyes like a snail’s, and he gives you a wish a day, and
they all come true.”

“Touched in the head, eh?” said the man in a low voice, “all the more shame to
you boys dragging the poor afflicted child into your sinful burglaries.”

“She’s not mad; it’s true,” said Anthea; “there is a fairy. If I
ever see him again I’ll wish for something for you; at least I would if
vengeance wasn’t wicked—so there!”

“Lor’ lumme,” said Billy Peasemarsh, “if there ain’t another on ’em!”

And now Willum came back, with a spiteful grin on his face, and at his back a
policeman, with whom Mr. Peasemarsh spoke long in a hoarse earnest whisper.

“I daresay you’re right,” said the policeman at last. “Anyway, I’ll take ’em up
on a charge of unlawful possession, pending inquiries. And
page: 62 the magistrate will deal with the case. Send the
afflicted ones to a home, as likely as not, and the boys to a reformatory. Now
then, come along, youngsters! No use making a fuss. You bring the gells along,
Mr. Peasemarsh, sir, and I’ll shepherd the boys.”

Speechless with rage and horror, the four children were driven along the streets
of Rochester. Tears of anger and shame blinded them, so that when Robert ran
right into a passer‐by he did not recognise her till a well‐known voice said,
“Well, if ever I did. Oh, Master Robert, whatever have you been a‐doing of now?”
And another voice, quite as well known, said, “Panty; want go own Panty!”

They had run into Martha and the baby!

Martha behaved admirably. She refused to believe a word of the policeman’s story,
or of Mr. Peasemarsh’s either, even when they made Robert turn out his pockets
in an archway and show the guineas.

“I don’t see nothing,” she said. “You’ve gone out of your senses, you two! There
ain’t any gold there—only the poor child’s
page: 63 hands, all over crock and dirt, and like the
very chimbley. Oh, that I should ever see the day!”

And the children thought this very noble of Martha, even if rather wicked, till
they remembered how the Fairy had promised that the servants should never notice
any of the fairy gifts. So of course Martha couldn’t see the gold, and so was
only speaking the truth, and that was quite right, of course, but not extra
noble.

It was getting dusk when they reached the police‐station. The policeman told his
tale to an inspector, who sat in a large bare room with a thing like a clumsy
nursery‐fender at one end to put prisoners in. Robert wondered whether it was a
cell or a dock.

“Produce the coins, officer,” said the inspector.

“Turn out your pockets,” said the constable.

Cyril desperately plunged his hands in his pockets, stood still a moment, and
then began to laugh—an odd sort of laugh that hurt, and that felt much more like
crying. His pockets were empty. So were the pockets of the
page: 64 others. For of course at sunset all the fairy gold
had vanished away.

“Turn out your pockets, and stop that noise,” said the inspector.

Cyril turned out his pockets, every one of the nine which enriched his Norfolk
suit. And every pocket was empty.

“Well!” said the inspector.

“I don’t know how they done it—artful little beggars! They walked in front of me
the ’ole way, so as for me to keep my eye on them and not to attract a crowd and
obstruct the traffic.”

“It’s very remarkable,” said the inspector, frowning.

“If you’ve quite done a‐browbeating of the innocent children,” said Martha, “I’ll
hire a private carriage and we’ll drive home to their papa’s mansion. You’ll
hear about this again young man!—I told you they hadn’t got any gold, when you
were pretending to see it in their poor helpless hands. It’s early in the day
for a constable on duty not to be able to trust his own eyes. As to the other
one, the less said the better; he keeps the Saracen’s
page: 65 Head, and he knows best what his liquor’s
like.”

“Take them away, for goodness’ sake,” said the inspector crossly. But as they
left the police‐station he said, “Now then!” to the policeman and Mr.
Peasemarsh, and he said it twenty times as crossly as he had spoken to
Martha.

* * * * * *

Martha was as good as her word. She took them home in a very grand carriage,
because the carrier’s cart was gone, and, though she had stood by them so nobly
with the police, she was so angry with them as soon as they were alone for
“trapseing into Rochester by themselves,” that none of them dared to mention the
old man with the pony‐cart from the village who was waiting for them in
Rochester. And so, after one day of boundless wealth, the children found
themselves sent to bed in deep disgrace, and only enriched by two pairs of
cotton gloves, dirty inside because of the state of the hands they had been put
on to cover, an imitation crocodile‐skin purse, and twelve penny buns, long
since digested.

page: 66

The thing that troubled them most was the fear that the old gentleman’s guinea
might have disappeared at sunset with all the rest, so they went down to the
village next day to apologise for not meeting him in Rochester, and to
see. They found him very friendly. The guinea had
not disappeared, and he had bored a hole in it and hung it on
his watch‐chain. As for the guinea the baker took, the children felt they
could not care whether it had vanished or not, which was not
perhaps very honest, but on the other hand was not wholly unnatural. But
afterwards this preyed on Anthea’s mind, and at last she secretly sent twelve
stamps by post to “Mr. Beale, Baker, Rochester.” Inside she wrote, “To pay for
the buns.” I hope the guinea did disappear, for that pastry‐cook was really not
at all a nice man, and, besides, penny buns are seven for sixpence in all really
respectable shops.